


Now We're Cooking

by panickyintheuk



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Baking, Birthdays, Gen, Lahey feels, M/M, Pack Feels, Pie, Pre-Slash, Stilinski feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-02
Updated: 2012-11-02
Packaged: 2017-11-17 15:15:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/552968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/panickyintheuk/pseuds/panickyintheuk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's Isaac's birthday, and he doesn't like cake.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Now We're Cooking

**Author's Note:**

> This is a very quick ficlet I wrote mostly because I was baking a pie, and maybe I also wanted to write Derek in an apron a little bit.

 “A-hoy-hoy?” says Stiles cheerily into the phone, more because he thinks cheeriness makes Derek uncomfortable than because he actually _feels_ cheerful. He’s kind of having a down day, honestly.

There’s a pause on the end of the line. “Isaac doesn’t like cake,” says Derek.

“Uh,” says Stiles.

“He doesn’t like cake so I’m making him pie. I need your help.”

“What makes you think I know how to make a pie?”

“I know how to _make_ one,” says Derek impatiently, “it’s just my hands are too hot for pastry. I mean I can dip them in ice water but it’s easier if a human does it.”

“You know you can _buy_ pies, dude.”

“I wanted to – never mind. I’ll call Lydia.”

“No, no, wait,” says Stiles, because – well honestly, he assumed Derek called Lydia first, because they’re, like, weird _friends_ now or something. And it’s insane that that makes him jealous, because Lydia is with Jackson anyway, and _Stiles_ is friends with Lydia now and god knows there’s nothing untoward happening _there_ , so it doesn’t make any sense but it must be because of how hot Derek is, because let’s face it, Lydia must at least have had some errant thoughts, right? Like, she’s only human, Stiles wouldn’t blame her. So that must be why it bums him out. “I’ll come over.”

“I’m at the apartment,” says Derek.

#

Derek opens the door wearing an apron and kind of a vexed expression.  “Hey. Thanks,” he says stiltedly, but Stiles doesn’t have a heart attack or anything because Derek is actually getting better about his Ps & Qs. Maybe they should institute some kind of reward system, like you would with a three year old. He’s ushered into the kitchen.

“Oh, uh,” says Derek, “I don’t have a spare apron. Wear mine for this part,” and he takes it off, shoves it over Stiles’ head and knots it in the back in what seems like one fluid movement.

“Okay, so, I have no idea what I’m doing,” says Stiles.

“Get your hands cold and dry them. I’ve already measured everything out.”

Derek tells him how to rub the butter into the flour. “Fingertips,” he admonishes every time Stiles isn’t gentle enough, and “like breadcrumbs” when it gets too sticky.

Stiles falls into a rhythm before too long, and it’s actually kind of relaxing once he gets into it. “I didn’t know you could bake,” he says.

“I’m not an expert or anything,” says Derek. “It’s just following recipes. Don’t handle it too much. Fingertips.”

When the butter’s all rubbed in, Derek retrieves a knife from the fridge and cracks an egg into a glass. “That’s pretty much it for your part,” he says. “You can go if you want.”

Stiles swallows. “Uh, can I stick around? I wouldn’t mind learning.”

So he sticks around while Derek shows him how to mix the egg in with a cold knife. “Too dry is better than too wet,” he says. “You can always get it wetter.”

“That’s what she said,” says Stiles automatically, and Derek opens his mouth and then visibly decides to let it go.

Stiles sticks around while the pastry chills, hands the apron over, and then he sticks around while Derek rolls it out, kind of fascinated by the way his biceps flex, and the way his hands fit around the – what? No. He focuses on the pastry getting thinner and thinner underneath the pin, and the clever way Derek crimps the edges with his fingers.

“Did you drive?” says Derek, putting the pie into the oven.

“No,” says Stiles, “walked.”

“If you want to wait around until it’s baked, I can drive you to the house after,” says Derek.

So he does.

#

Stiles still doesn’t really _get_ why Derek felt the need to make a pie from scratch for Isaac. Unless this is a normal alpha thing, doing stuff for your betas, in which case Derek has taken his sweet time stepping up to the plate. But it’s endearing, in  a way.

“You like Isaac, right?” says Derek suddenly. Maybe he was creeped out by the silence, which, Stiles can be silent, okay, he contains multitudes, dammit. “I mean,” Derek continues, “I know he was a handful right after he was turned, but he’s settled down okay?”

“Yeah, I like him fine.” It’s mostly true. So Isaac is Derek’s favourite (that’s more true than ever with Erica and Boyd AWOL), and Scott’s new best friend. He’s not a bad guy. It’s not actually his fault that everybody loves him so much. Stiles can be charitable.

Derek nods, like he’s relieved.

#

Isaac arrives at the house last, with Scott – they’d arranged it that way – but they don’t all jump out and yell ‘surprise’ or anything, because even if Isaac couldn’t smell them all a mile off he’s not an _idiot_. It’s not even their usual Meet night. So when Isaac comes in all the lights are on, but Stiles and Lydia and Jax and Danny and Melissa and Alan and Peter (who they couldn’t not invite because of Isaac’s crush) are all standing under a store-bought _Happy Birthday!_ banner, and Derek’s in front of them all holding the pie, and he quietly says, “happy birthday, Isaac.”

For a moment Isaac doesn’t look like he’s becoming a year older, he looks like he’s years younger. His face is childlike as he whispers “Did you make that for me?”

“Stiles helped,” says Derek, glancing over his shoulder, and suddenly there’s a look on his face that Stiles has never, ever seen there before.

He suddenly remembers the winter after his mom died, his first flu without her there, and how he’d cried and begged his dad for penny soup. His dad hadn’t known what he meant at first, but he must have looked it up or called somebody, because he came into Stiles’ room later with a bowl of it on a tray and a look of desperate hope in his eyes. It hadn’t been as good as mom’s, but Stiles had eaten it all, because even then he knew what that look meant. Yeah, Stiles gets it.

Stiles has to look away for a second because he’s getting a little emotional, and then Isaac runs up to Derek and hugs him and Derek looks shocked and pleased and that’s it, it’s no good, Stiles definitely has tears in his eyes. But that’s okay, because Isaac and Derek do, too.

**Author's Note:**

> The "penny soup" part is shamelessly stolen from an Anne Tyler novel. I'm pretty sure it was Ladder of Years.


End file.
